Starting easy

So on Sunday, I downloaded the first Italian lessons to Mango ( the language app I mentioned that my library gives me free access to) on my iPad, and I started working through them while folding laundry (which I usually do on Sundays). The first chapter was pretty basic — hello, good evening, goodbye, sir, ma’am, how are you, thank you, you’re welcome — the sort of things that if you know any other Romance language, you’d recognize anyway, and if you’ve played through the Ezio trilogy of Assassin’s Creed, you’ll have picked up more Italian than this anyway.

I also played it while chopping stuff for dinner one night this week, and chapter two is still fairly basic — excuse me, do you speak Italian/English, I understand, I don’t understand. All very good phrases for the traveler, of course.

There are 20 chapters in this course, so if I continue at 1.5 to 2 chapters a week, I’ll get through it in a few months. I may wind up slowing down as I run into things that are less familiar, but I do have plenty of time folding laundry and cooking each week to listen, so if nothing else, I can always repeat the lessons until I do have them down.

I’m not under any illusion that I’ll be fluent or able to translate anything major at the end of this course, but I’ll worry about the next step when I’m done with this one.

Ran across this quote last week, which I thought perfectly captured my desire both to start a new language and to blog more: